Ancestor Seekers by the Root Bound is a group of people that meet at the Lemon Grove Library once a month to share their genealogical data. We welcome beginners to advanced to attend. We meet the 3rd Wed of every month at the Lemon Grove Library from 6 to 8 pm. All are welcome to attend.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

My cousin spent his career being one of the tavern proprietors in Williamsburg, having retired not long ago. He literally became that man, and you can still tell it too when you talk to him.

He sent this along, and I thought everyone might enjoy it.

Hi Folks:As most of you know I live in Williamsburg,Va. and have lived in the 18th century for 5 days out of a week. Here is some information from the 18th century:

In the 1700s and early 1800s,almost everybody drank beer and or wine. Mother made "small beer" for the family to have at the table for meals. SO! just in case you would like to bring back a "family tradition" here's how: COLONIAL SMALL BEERStart by boiling molasses, hops, and wheat bran, followed by straining the mixture and adding yeast for the fermenting process. Expensive malted barley was sometimes replaced by cornstalks or pumpkins. It retained the molasses taste.

Now for the adults:PORTER BEER-see above, but made with a mixture of burnt molasses and sugar for color plus licorice for taste.

More wisdom from the 18th century. Dr. Ben Franklin said: " There are more old drunkards than old doctors"; "If God had not wanted you to drink ale he would not have fashioned your elbow to bend so"!

Enjoy!!!

robertajestes@att.net mailto:TLCGP-members@yahoogroups.com The Lost Colony

Friday, March 19, 2010

We started with a map with many herald names on it. It was passed around for everyone to see if their Irish name was on it. Some met with success for surname. We then passed around some books on Ireland that I had on my shelf regarding the county. I also shared a book from 1890's I had gotten on Dublin.

Maps were shared from a book I had acquired so that all could see the region we would be mostly addressing this evening.

My source book for the information was: MODERN IRELAND 1600-1972 by R E FOSTER The Penguin Press

I scoured the index and the following chapters I addressed to the audience due to the nature of the information, and Americans.

Due to some interesting events between the Scottish and the British there became a change in Ireland. I am not going to go into that, save for another day. But the Scots appeared to have a hand in the mixes that occurred, much in book.

But because Irish data was requested I presented data about the development of the area that the first emigrees seemed to have come from and why and where the went to settle.

The Irish were settlers of this land prior to the English and for all the warring they did and did not do the method for retaining civilty within their tribes was admired by the English so much so that they adapted many of their laws from the "TUETH" a Irish rule they lived by. Religion and Politcs were mixed and accepted.

The Irish lived according to their economy. 1600's time line we did not talk of previous times. When the flax seed was shipped in the ships went back to America empty. The flax seed obviously was grown and harvested to make linen. Linen was the market of the day.

When the markets went down people were unemployed and starving, when market up they worked and enjoyed life a bit.

The political arena was worried about the Pope having more control over their land so the passed a law " 1704 Act to Prevent further Popacy." There by they had more control on home soil.

The Dessenters were barred from holding public office, barred from town corporations, until the 1770's.

As time marched on by 1770 Protestants were the Professionals, and the Catholics were the laborers.

In 1730, the prosperity was up and by 1760's was up again. It was up and down and up and down.

By 1603, the people had already started to distrust the Catholics. So it took 100 years for the Popacy act. It took another 75 before the Protestants were on top.

Ulster was the area dominately held by the Ulster Men. Which came from a politcal agreement with the Scots mostly.

By 1613 there was bitter rivalary with Old Ireland and New Ireland.

The peoples were fisherman and worked in Newfoundland for a season and came home and went back. The others were farmers and coastal fisherman and planters.

The wools and yarns Ireland is known for today was not in existence like today.

Linen was the fabric of the day.

Migration started when the ships realized they could make money taking people away and not having an empty ship and carry rock as ballast. So they started charging a small fee to carry Irish to America and other ports that they would be landing at.

People in Ireland at this time were of many nations due to many previous wars and they had not gone home afterward. Their were French, Huguenots, German Pal- atinate's and Moravians that lived in Ireland.

North America was the destination of choice for Ulster Irish through West Indies, where many did stay. Pre 1720, New England was the favored destination then Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South Carolina. The land and religous freedom drew them from the turmoil of Ireland. (found this odd because others said many and many did settle in the Shanandoah Valley, VA area)

By 1720 the rate increased and sped up then slowed down then up again. By 1760 20,000 took ships from Ulster ports claiming 1770's at least 30,000 left. 1770-74 2/5 of total emigrees were from Ulster up to 250,000 people also included Anglicans, 100,000 Catholics from the south in the same time period.

A key difference in the Irish immigrants was the Ulster families arrived as families the women went with the men with children. The other Irish only the men came and this stayed same until 19th century. This was not done anywhere else but Dublin, whole families.

In 1790, they found many French had stayed after the (7 Year War), There were so many wars I did not go into the internal turmoil in Ireland politically, Obviously from some time in the early 1500's forward, the' unrest was present and active.

Ulster Society structure where readiness to move, settle and subdue land was traditional, re religion and cultural apartness, enabled communities to emigrate and stay together. Ships brought flax seed from American and emigrants came back to America on the same ship.

By 1790, the north was driving out the Catholic families from Armagh, the most dense populated city in Ireland and south of Derry. (So this statement implies different than another chapter that this group was Catholic that was coming to America but the time frame is later than the first people coming in the early 1700.s) ( Interesting because I always thought it was the Ulster people that run the Catholic to America) Obviously time line makes a difference as to which group came.

Another interesting fact was that not Boston, Chicago and New York were the dominate land for the Catholics. They first settled in the south and created a diocese. More tidbits in this time frame were: Liverpool was 25% Irish in 1851. England and Wales in 1841-51 were 79% increase in Irish.

1800 Migration figures

1815-45 1,000,000 to probably 1,500,000 1845-1870 3,000,000 left 1890 3,000,000 Irish are living over seas. Of this number 39% had been born in Ireland.

No where near full data but just highlights to help in your Irish research.

http://www.genealogywise.com/profiles/blog/list?user=15f4r0lkclk6m another with great potential for more help. It has online chats and society groups you can join for free.

For those who want to try FACEBOOK.COM after you sign in look for the little blue and lite blue people figure on bottom of page it takes you to the groups lists.Many hundreds of lists for all over USA. Also NEHGS , OGS Ohio Genealogical Society, and others no fees involved in this area.

http://www.sampubco.com/ another site I use to look for wills,probates available free to learn not free for data. A good site.

rootsweb.org is good a part of ancestry but free.

My favorite to use site to start always is usgenweb.org. Does state, county and lots of pertinent knowledge to guide your research.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Greetings all, we will be doing a wee bit of Irish on Wednesday evening at the Lemon Grove Library across from St.John The Cross Catholic church and in corner of the mall where Anna's is located on the corner of Broadway and Washington St..

It sets back in the corner it is not out front. Steigers Florist is also in this shopping mall.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

The Society meeting today was fun and informative. I loved how he said," Go ahead and read it." Then everyone one chuckled or so it seemed it tickled everyone.

Now whom am I speaking of, why the speaker of today's event is who. Wayne Anderson whom is from north county area, at least that is what was implied.

I thought his hand out for the first talk fit the bill very well. I am not sure how I would have made the second one different but when dealing with the three lines of confusion it tended to get confusing to follow some times. I think the point was well taken that just because the records imply one thing does not mean it is the right fact for that situation or family.

His first talk on WHEN THE ABSENCE OF INFORMATION WAS A CLUE, discussed the lack of records and naming patterns used in Sweden and other countries. The patronymic naming patterns and the use of the man named LARS his son was son and daughter was dotter Lar son and Lars dotter. He followed this out a couple of generations showing how the names change as the descend from Lars. This method was used until into the 20th century.

When working with the absence of sources, one must use a compilation of data to find the end results, also ask for help when you are in need, proving what you have learned so it will hold up to scrutiny and is accurate.

He stated in 1686 all Parishes in Sweden had to keep records of all the citizens. They also did a Annual Clerical Survey, including people moving in and out of the area. People seemed to need to get approval from the church to move from one place to another. I understood that they did this until 1991.

Military had Muster Rolls which also kept track of where their service men were at all times. Sometimes these were well kept as I understood it and alas some times not as well. These Rolls would list the parents and where the individual was from, birth, christening and their children. But they only mustered in the spring and were let off in October. His ancestor served for more than 20 years this way but because he had no permanent home to go to he was a wanderer. So records were way more difficult. It was the Service records in the end that saved him.

Service men were given different names when entering the service and many applied to plants, animals and places. Ironic if a person left the service the one replacing him may be given the same name. It must have been terribly confusing to company comandants to keep track of his men.

He also mentioned that almost all of Sweden at this time was farmers and farms were given names and that also can become involved in the naming of a person, If I understood him correctly. He mentioned women kept their name for life, even afte marriage it did not change. Men's names as you can see obviously could and would change a few times in their life time.

In regards to records kept it came to light that a class of people were basically left out of the rolls and they were the ROMA (gypsy).

It was his use of many sources that helped him to determine what he was not finding and to resolve his issues with the ancestors. It also took many trips to SLC and over seas to realize what he was missing. Once it was obvious then he could apply himself to that situation and resolve the ancestry of the family.

Yes, he descends from Gypsy's I truly envy him. but I do not envy him the work and patience it took him to resolve his brick walls.

WHAT WE LEARNED ON THE WAY TO PROVING SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT TRUE

The second talk was on a family that was in Maryland and North Carolina, it also came with many discrepancies. It seems he has a very prominent line in this region and no one seems to have done a major research to resolve some glaring discrepancies in the lineage. Aha, 1. a mother can not have a child when only 5 years old.

He commented that when your using a tree on Ancestry make sure it is documented and documented properly or to only use as a guide. I have also found that to be true.

Due to the lack of data in the time period he was searching it was hard to gather the evidence needed to verify or prove right or wrong the trees already on line regarding this family.

He took us through the steps he used to verify the correct lineage of three lines on this tree. These lines tended to interlink so I think that is why he used all three but it was a wee more difficult to follow.

Much of the land inherited was under English Common Law which meant if the 1st son was alive he inherited the land with out WILL. No paper trail then occurred.

17th Century Parish records were Register's of the people, Court Records, Land and Wills were the most evident for research. Most links are located via land and Wills in this time period. I thought it interesting he did not mention tax records.

English Common Law is as this: no Will needed if they had a oldest son to enherit, or could be willed to the oldest son with a stipend to others, only descendants by full blood could inherit, a widows dower would cover the needs of the widow until she died or remarried. The land stayed with the son it never went to the widow. The dower share was normally 1/3 of profits, lands etc. This was to support her til her death.

In the absence of data one has to set up a hypothesis of what is needed. One is then to work on that and not get off the path or you can get into big trouble. Check the Facts, is Hypothesis true or not, check out all data, construct a time line, what are the requirements for proof.

A big comment he made and showed us is to check the original sources because ABSTRACTS are copied and errors can be made.

Lastly, just because 100 people have a tree with this data does not make it true only the proven sources can justify the real answers to the lineage.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The long-awaited premiere of Who Do You Think You Are? took place last Friday evening, March 5, and earned NBC the second place slot for viewers according to Nielsen. The first episode featured popular Sex In The City actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Some of the research on Ms. Parker’s ancestry was done by NEHGS, and director of education and programs D. Joshua Taylor appears in the episode to share the results of our research. For those who missed it, the episode is available on many cable networks in the NBC on-demand section. It is also available online on Hulu at www.hulu.com/who-do-you-think-you-are. The show airs on Fridays at 8:00 p.m., and Gary Boyd Roberts will appear on the April 2 episode with actress Brooke Shields

Monday, March 8, 2010

Jeane Isreal and I attended the talk given by Daniel Bartosz on "Tracing Your American Indian Roots" both presentation 1 and 2. It was a great duel presentation by a very knowledge person on Indian heritage and history. His maps were excellent and requested by all. He did tell us where he found them. I liked that his sources were sited in the Syllabus. He also shared some links and much Indian History data on migration and displacement and inner marriages, wars. food raised, census data and much more.

It was amazing to hear, but not shocking to learn that there were 55 Million to 100 Million Indians in the America's pre European Invasion time. Some thing I had heard in family he confirmed that the Scotch Irish were the early trappers and traders and intermarried with the Indians.He commented on the fact that Tobacco, Rice and Indigo were the main products grown by the colonies pre Revolutionary War before the demand of cotton and the desire of Indian lands. He talked about Major Ridge and the battles held over Indian lands.

He discussed the various: Indian Census, Annuity and Court of Claims Records, Federal Census and their recording there with variants, BIA Agency Records, BIA Indian Census Rolls (1885-1940), Indian Schools records, Removal Census and Muster roll records (especially of the Five Civilized Tribes), Land Allotment Records of the General Allotment Act of 1887, and BIA Agency Records and the Tribal Office Enrollment Records (for more full blood).

Today there are three main resources for American Indian Records of use in Genealogy.

a. The National Archivesb. The Family History Library and Centersc. Internet Web Sites.

He mentioned the moving of the National Archives from Laguna Niguel to: 23123 Cajalco Rd, Perris CA 92570 which has data for Southern CA Indians, all of AZ and Clark Co NV.

Mr. Bartosz showed us an Indian Genealogy Chart which shows room for the Indian name and the Americanized name. I liked this feature very much. I suspect we could adapt it to other cultures also.

He mentioned that Church records were most dominant for research from 1500's forward for research. The chart he presented was from a modified older LDS research paper that was very informative in graph form.

His maps shown gave the placement of peoples at different times of development of the America's. Some migration maps were also used and explained. General Jackson was discussed in his start to have the Indians to be removed from their lands. Later after Jackson was President, he influenced congress to pass the 1830 Indian Removal Act to force southern tribes to relocate beyond the Mississippi river.

He talked about YDNA and Mtdna and it's accuracy and inaccuracy for Indian genetics.

He referenced several good books to use in our research and some interesting web sites to explore for more information.

His talk is given in a four-hour event at Los Angeles area and so when his presentation ended he was able to go back and add data that people asked about. He said he would be glad to answer any questions we presented to him if he could.

He mentioned Barbara Renick's zeal and desire to help gather information and make it available to us at her site. http://www.zroots.com/ .

He mentioned using Google in our research to learn more information and to garner some more maps. He said there were about “eight” search engines - but Google seems to be the top one over all. He mentioned Wikipedia has quality information on Indian tribes for their history, culture and current status.

Mr. Bartosz said one of the best sites was http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/

It is about Native American Indian Genealogy.

He mentions online Native American Genealogy Records and Databases at:

http://www.genealogybranches.com/nativeamericans.html

He also goes back and mentions the FamilySearch "Wiki" at

https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Main Page

As a paid subscription he mentions http://www.ancestry.com

He lists some other good map sites to try.

He mentions references to African American Kinship Records…such as Eleanor' L Denson Wyatt web site “Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes – Black Indians”…that is loaded with databases and a true labor of love. Also a book by Angela Y Walton-Raji that is well written on African American Indian records that is now out of print but could be obtained on a inter library loan.

I look forward to learning more from him in the future. Thanks Mr. Bartosz for such a great presentation.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Saturday morning I woke early and met Virginia and we went to the parking garage and met with other CVGS members to car pool to Escondido. Gary and I drove. It was a quiet and enjoyable ride up the road. No rain was in sight.

We attended the History Fair and learned many interesting and useful things to apply to our research methods and places to contact and events to go to for further research knowledge. Huntington Library we are tracking you next.

Jeanne Isreal and I attended a duel presentation given by Daniel Bartosz on researching American Indians. Two different topics and loads of information in both. Presentation was so easy to follow with such a difficult subject we applaud you for your endeavors Mr. Bartosz. I loved that he sourced much of his material in the book for us to refer to when on our own. He also does a four hour presentation that I am most anxious to attend down the road.

I then went to lunch with Ruth, her Aunt and Ann Diffley. We discussed the topics we had already seen. We all seemed to feel we were learning an tremendous amount of good information for use in our research.

After lunch I went to the talk by Barbara Renick, I have enjoyed her talks for many conferences and always delight when I get to hear her speak and expound and exhilarate us with information and knowledge and ease of us to understand what she is saying.

Her easy way of presenting the data on her topic,"5 C's to Success in Genealogy Today", I would list them here but not sure that copyright laws would apply.Her matra she learned to remember to site your source was excellent to help us all.If she gives permission I will later share it here with you on another day.

I for one have said I get excited and forget to take the (where) when I find a very lost link in genealogy. At first I thought this method was a bit archaic but then thinking on it. If you write the source before you verify the data if it not yours you just delete if yours you have not forgotten to take it with you.

She is always so informative and shares great visual aids to back up her talk.Thanks again Barbara for such a great presentation. My four hours of sleep the night before hindered setting very long but I did listen to you speak. Thanks .

After this I checked at our booth and wandered a bit to get some air in my lungs and clear the fog that had tried to settle in from lack of sleep. I then popped into Jean Hibben's talk and stayed for her second one also. Virginia came in and shared the second one as did Gary.

It was a great event and the societies that were there were varied and numerous: Sons of Norway, A Scottish one, CW southern and CW northern, War of 1812, many of the variant genealogical societies in our county also.

William Wood Lawrence born PA 1820 Union Army Civil War Battle of the Wilderness captured taken to Andersonville Prison and died there according to family information. His daughter Martha Ann Lawrence married John BURNETT had two sons : Daniel (her Grandfather) and David.

San Diego Genealogical Society is having a trip to Los Angeles City Library. March 20th. $40 for members $45 for non members.

This is a super bargain, One entire floor of library is donated to Genealogy. Awesome resources for New York. The black hole state.

The bus will be leaving the VA Admin area in Mission Valley at 7:30 am and we will be back home in the evening. You may pack a lunch or buy there.

Please contact: With Kris permission here is data

Thank you for your early response – we will need a minimum of 24 registrations for the trip to be made. At this time we have only twelve. We anticipate receiving more registrations, but our treasurer has asked that we hold the checks until the minimum number is reached. The deadline for registering is March 12.